The Strange 20-year Curse (Presidential)

(Not really sure where this belongs; Please move it if there is a more appropriate forum for it)



I have brought this up to both Reps and Dems, since it seems to be a bipartisan plague that descended upon the nation in the 19th century. It started in 1840, and since then, at regular 20 year intervals, every winner of the Presidential election has ended up dead and left the White House in a coffin, rather than on his feet:


1840—William Henry Harrison. Freak Pnuemonia after parading about in windy, frigid weather on his inauguration day with no overcoat on. Dead 30 days later, April 4, 1841.


1860—Abraham Lincoln. Assassinated by angry confederate sympathizer (Interestingly, one whose sympathies were never quite strong enough for him to summon the courage to take up arms during the actual conflict). Never regained consciousness and died the next morning, April 15, 1865.


1880—James A. Garfield. Shot by a deranged, frustrated federal job seeker, on July 2, 1881. Doctors were unable to locate the 2nd fatal bullet, somewhere in his spine, and he lingered through several weeks of extremely painful deterioration and increasing infection, before contracting food poisoning and pneumonia and succumbing to a massive aneurysm on September 19, 1881


1900—William McKinley. Shot by a deranged anarchist. Doctors were unable to locate the 2nd fatal bullet, and he died 8 days later from gangrene, September 14, 1901.


1920—Warren G. Harding. While on a cross-country train tour, died suddenly of a mysterious embolism on August 2, 1923, following food poisoning and several days of pnemonia.


1940—Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR went on to win an unprecedented 4th term in office. But was unable to secure an unprecedented avoidance of the 20-year curse, and died at the White House of a massive cerebral hemorrhage on the morning of April 12, 1945, while seated for a portrait painting.


1960—John F. Kennedy. Assassinated on Novemver 22, 1963 by a former US soldier turned Marxist, communist sympathizer and former defector to the Soviet Union.


1980—Ronald Reagan. Broke the curse, though not without a narrow escape from death, during an assassination attempt by a deranged former mental patient on March 30, 1981—only 69 days into his term. Though not publicly revealed at the time, the richochet bullet that pierced Reagan’s chest was about 2 cm off from likely killing him--that distance the difference that caused it to pierce his left lung rather than his heart. So far as is publicly known, Reagan survived his remaining time in office without incident. Some speculated that astrology was involved.

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Even now, there seems to be insufficient data to determine if the curse has been ended/defeated, or if it was just miraculously avoided/skipped a generation. My Rep coworker says that the curse is real, but that it was so important for Reagan to complete the work he was put on this earth to do, divine intervention interceded on his behalf. I say that more information is needed, as we pass future 20-year junctions and other Presidents do or do not complete their terms. (Note: This is in no way intended to spur specific comment or thought on the current occupant of the White House :). That might be something to avoid…….Rather it is a serious observation of a strange phenomenon that has seemed so span centuries, and suggests a possible need for serious scientific inquiry.

1) Reagan wasn't exactly alive at the end of his term; and

2) The President who was elected in 2000 didn't even start his term.

Unless maybe 9-11 counts, since there seemed to have been intent from Flight 93 to hit the White House.


I would have spit out my drink/lunch if someone I was with said "God saved Ron Reagan because he had important work to do". I don't think that God considers "fucking up the world" to be important work, unless God needed the world seriously fucked so that someone could come in later and be a real savior, which is always a possibility.

Per Wikipedia:

The United States Capitol Building and the White House are widely believed to have been possible intended targets.

According to an interview with captured Al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, as published in The New York Times on September 9, 2002, the target of Flight 93 was indeed the U.S. Capitol.

Because whatever one may think of Bush the elder, he was no ideological flag bearer the way Reagan was. Aside from his stint in the House, Bush 41 was pretty much just a professional bureaucrat. The guy once called Reagan’s supply side economics policies “Voodoo economics", right? 41 found his road to power in the Rep party, and out of expedience, changed himself from pro-choice to pro-life, espoused himself to be tax cutter, etc., etc. But if he’d gotten to the oval office without having won a campaign where he promised all that stuff, I think he’d have governed a lot more moderately than RR. Ironic: Reagan, born in a working class town to an alcoholic father. Bush 41, a child of priviledge from his first day on earth to his last.

(Lincoln was) "Assassinated by an angry confederate sympathizer (Interestingly, one whose sympathies were never quite strong enough for him to summon the courage to take up arms during the actual conflict)"


I just realized.....Booth was the first American ChickenHawk! :dunce:


Too bad.......Lincoln would have done reconstruction right, and perhaps cut by a few decades the amount of misery and strife this nation went through. Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt = Good "R"s.

He tried to squash the labor movement for one thing and was very happy when the Haymarket Chicgo guys were hung. Because of him the bear on the California flag was killed off. At least he made Yosemite Nat'l Park a National Park which is about the only good thing he did.



Check out this book about John Wilkes Booth if you haven't read it. Really very well written and a "you are there" kind of feeling.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51H9FP9DYKL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

Here's the funny thing about my TR comment. I'd always thought of him--relative to the time he lived in--almost as a Ralph Nader type when it came to trying to identify people who stood up for the common man. I wrote my comment after sort of 'double-checking' myself by skimming the Wikepedia entry on him. The introductory summary said this:

"Roosevelt was a Progressive reformer who sought to move the dominant Republican Party into the Progressive camp. He distrusted wealthy businessmen and dissolved 40 monopolistic corporations as a "trust buster". He was clear, however, to show that he did not disagree with trusts and capitalism in principle but was only against their corrupt, illegal practices. His "Square Deal" promised a fair shake for both the average citizen (through regulation of railroad rates and pure food and drugs) and the businessmen. As an outdoorsman, he promoted the conservation movement, emphasizing efficient use of natural resources. After 1906 he attacked big business and suggested the courts were biased against labor unions."


So that last part made me think he was PRO-labor union. Apparently I need to do a little deeper research when time permits.

......for talking up Lincoln. I guess I don't know the bad side of TR, whereas I probably know more of both the good and the bad about Lincoln. My answer was going to be that for all his weaknesses, you have to judge him by his time, that others stood on his shoulders, and that you could not have later had the progressive movement or civil rights movement without first having Lincoln.

I like Lincoln too much...he probably had the worst time of being president and then when the country could've been pulled together he gets shot.

The stolen election must have been a manifestation of the Curse. Democracy was murdered. There was the same sense of collective national grief and despair as when a president is assassinated. For me, it really was like someone had died.